Preparation of glass plate-supported nanostructure ZnO thin film deposited by sol-gel spin-coating technique and its photocatalytic degradation to monoazo textile dye

Abstract

Glass plate-supported nanostructure ZnO thin films were deposited by sol-gel spin coating. Films were preheated at 275 °C for 10minutes and annealed at 350, 450, and 550 °C for 80minutes. The ZnO thin films were transparent ca 8090 in visible range and revealed that absorption edges at about 370nm. The c-axis orientation improves and the grain size increases which was indicated by an increase in intensity of the (002) peak at 34.4 °in XRD corresponding to the hexagonal ZnO crystal. The photocatalytic degradation of X6G an anionic monoazo dye, in aqueous solutions, was investigated and the effects of some operational parameters such as the number of layer and reusability of ZnO nanostructure thin film were examined. The results showed that the five-layer coated glass surfaces have a very high photocatalytic performance.